Friday, August 8, 2014

Window on Eurasia: Patriarch Kirill, FSB Backing Different Candidates in Ukrainian Church Election

Paul
Goble

Staunton, August 8 – Many in Russia
and Ukraine view Patriarch Kirill as a Russian nationalist or even imperialist,
but the Russian intelligence services and presumably behind them the Kremlin
consider him insufficiently nationalist or imperialist, according to Viktor
Chub, a religious affairs expert.

These objections to Kirill are
longstanding, Chub says, and focus on the Russian patriarch’s inability “to
liquidate the autonomy of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church and convert Ukraine
into a second Belarus.” One result of this split is that Kirill and the FSB have
different candidates for head of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow
Patriarchate (prochurch.info/index.php/news/more/30087).

According to surveys of the
hierarchs who will vote in the upcoming election, most now support Metropolitan
Antony, currently administrator of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, because they
believe his progressive approach will help them preserve the UOC as a separate
structure for as long as possible.

Antony is Kirill’s preferred
alternative as well, Chub says. But Antony and his hierarchs can survive only
by being increasingly pro-Ukrainian and consequently less pro-Moscow than the
church has been in the past or than many in the Russian security agencies and
some in the UOC hierarchy would prefer.

Pro-Russian hierarchs like
Metropolitan Ilarion, Pavel, and Agafangel prefer Metropolitan Onufri not only
because he did not speak out against Russia’s moves against Ukraine but also
because he banned “unofficial talks with bishops of the Ukrainian Orthodox
Church of the Kyiv Patriarchate.

Most UOC hierarchs oppose Onufri
because they believe he will further reduce the influence of the church and
leave them without parishes or power.Kirill is against him, Chub suggests, because if Onufri became patriarch
of Ukraine, some conservatives might use him to challenge Kirill as patriarch
of Moscow.

As Chub
notes, rumors have been put out by conservatives that Kirill and his hierarchs
have “sold out” to the Masons and that it is “the holy duty of true sons of the
Orthodox church” to seek his ouster. But that possibility has led the Russian
special services to conclude that Onufri could be too dangerous to their
interests. And they want someone else in Kyiv.

Neither of its
first two choices, Onufri or Pavel, has any chance of gaining a majority of
votes, and there do not exist any “real reasons for Ukrainian bishops to unite
against Metropolitan Antony,” the analyst says. So what the FSB has done is to
start a defamatory campaign against Antony and to recruit hierarchs, with
compromat and bribes, to oppose him.

The FSB has
also helped organize a group of hierarchs to support Metropolitans Simeon and
Aleksandr to assume the two top jobs in the church, but that effort appears to be
stillborn, Chub says, because each has enemies within the hierarchy and is
unlikely to get many votes regardless of what the Russian organs do.

As of now,
Antony, Kirill’s preferred candidate, is likely to win, Chub says, but given
how high the stakes are, it is entirely possible that the Russian secret
services will try to pull something out of the hat to put in place someone who
will do Moscow’s bidding now even at the cost of the church’s membership in the
near future.